Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said Monday that he and his wife are being audited.
In a post on X, Hegseth shared a photograph of what appears to be a letter from the Internal Revenue Service addressed to the couple. Part of it states that they “owe a balance of $33,558.16.”
Hegseth doesn’t seem to think the audit is on the level, though.
“Of course the outgoing Biden IRS rushed an ‘audit’ of the incoming SecDef. Total sham,” he wrote alongside the picture, which revealed neither the date of the letter nor the tax period it covered. “The party of ‘norms’ and ‘decency’ strikes again. We will never back down.”
A Fox News host until being nominated by Donald Trump to lead the Defense Department, Hegseth’s annual salary at the media company was north of $2 million, according to a financial disclosure report he filed as part of the confirmation process. Additionally, he earned $900,000 in speaking engagement fees over the last two years, according to the report.
As Secretary of Defense, Hegseth will be paid $246,000 per year.
The Trump administration is expected to soon announce substantial layoffs at the IRS.
Furthermore, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is looking to gain access to the IRS’s highly-classified system for housing taxpayers' financial information.
The goal, a Trump administration official told The Washington Post, is to “eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse, and improve government performance to better serve the people.” But experts told the Post that it’s highly unusual for political appointees to be given access to individuals’ private data.
During the Biden administration, which hired IRS employees to help with collections, the service launched a crackdown on wealthy tax evaders.
